Correct pelvic action and posture ensures that our muscles load correctly and stay free of tension and pain. Cobra Pose helps you sit, stand, and work out the right way. Your chest gets an incredible lift and opening sensation with Cobra Pose that also stretches your shoulders and gives you all kinds of health benefits.

Learn how to perform Cobra Pose properly so you can reap its numerous health benefits. It works well in a floor sequence and improves many bodily functions. In the Sanskrit texts, Bhujangasana has the reputation of eliminating diseases. I can’t promise you that! But I can promise a balancing chest opening action that soothes your heart and strengthens your lower body.

 

Benefits of Cobra Pose

The action of Cobra Pose helps you strengthen your spine from your stretched shoulders down to your firm, activated buttocks. This gives you many health benefits in your chest and abdomen, including improved heart and lung function as well as stimulating your vital organs.

Other than strengthening and stretching, Cobra Pose provides therapy for sciatica and asthma. The added energy in your spine and abdominal organs can also help you treat fatigue and stress. At the end of a long workday, Cobra pose can be very strengthening, especially for those of us who hunch at a desk for hours at a time. It offers a great spine movement that reverses the dysfunction that can build up from our Western working lifestyle.

 

How to Do the Pose

Cobra Prose begins prone on the floor with your legs stretched back. Both your hands and the tops of your feet should be spread on the floor with your elbows close to your body. As you enter the pose, you should feel the weight pressing through the front of your pelvis and the front of your thighs and feet.

As you breathe in, straighten your arms as your chest lifts from the floor. Remember that higher isn’t always better! A rookie mistake with Cobra Pose is to push so far up that your pubis leaves the floor. You want to stretch far enough up that your arms are straight and your abdomen gets a good stretch, but while keeping your thighs in contact with the floor. You should feel your hips narrowing and straightening as your buttocks tighten (you want them to activate without hardening and tensing up).

Allow your shoulder blades to become firm as your side ribs push forward, though not your front ribs. If you push too far forward you may feel yourself tightening in your lower back, which isn’t good. Let the backbend activate evenly across your spine. You can remain in this pose breathing for up to 30 seconds. When you’re ready, breathe out and slowly lower yourself back to being prone on the floor.

 

The Takeaway

Bhujangasana stretches your abdomen, energizing your abdominal organs. By opening your shoulders and chest, you should be able to feel energized and strengthened using Cobra Pose, particularly in your heart, lungs, and spine. Those who have asthma or sciatica can use the pose to effectively counteract symptoms that mount during the day. Fatigue and stress are no match for a mighty Cobra Pose, provided you take it easy and let yourself enjoy it!